Racial discrimination in medicine leads to inadequate healthcare for African Americans

 Plagues, epidemics, diseases, viruses and pandemics have been around too many centuries to count or adequately trace. When the “10 Plagues” were listed in the Bible, and executed by God, we  would probably call the plagues an epidemic, instead of a pandemic. The world was not as large as it is today. The plagues were localized to Egypt.

In the Bible the plague that appeared to be the most devoid of emotions and caring is #10. None of the other plagues had gotten Pharaoh’s attention, which was God’s intent. All God asked of Pharaoh was that he let the Israelites go free. But Pharaoh was muleheaded. Freedom for the Israelites was not on the table. 

God initiated another plan. According to Exodus, God told Moses and his brother, Aaron: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonder in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments”.

Moses and Aaron apparently though that was a good plan, so they fetched their rods and headed to Pharaoh’s fancy abode (Exodus, Chapter 5). Let the magic show begin! Aaron threw down his rod. Wallah! A live snake was suddenly in the house! Pharaoh summoned his crew, as if to ask Aaron: “Is that all you got?” Pharaoh’s crew threw down their rods. Now the Pharaoh’s castle was crawling with snakes! 

He waited for the next rod-throw down. Pharaoh was in for a surprise. Aaron took his rod to the river, touched the water and up popped frogs, covering all of Egypt. Pharaoh could not compete with the frog magic. He surrendered, asking Moses and Aaron to call off the frogs. He promised to let the Israelites go free. Moses told Pharaoh that he would take him at his word. No more plagues! 

But wouldn’t you know it! Pharaoh flipped on his promise. He tried to pull a “fooled you fools” on Moses, Aaron and God. But God was not having any of this. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!  After that the contest went all the way wrong for Pharaoh and his magicians. 

God hardened Pharaoh’s heart even more. He still wouldn’t let the Israelites go. And then God hit Egypt with a really, really fatal plague. Moses said through God (Exodus 11:5) “And all the firstborn of the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the animals”.  

If you are familiar with the story of how the Israelites finally escaped, you know the ending to the story. Pharaoh did not win. **A handmill is a stone device used to grind grain into flour, a chore performed by women in the Bible.

Former President Donald Trump is comparable to Pharaoh. He hardened his attitude when he learned that a deadly pandemic was about to hit America. Before he was exposed by noted journalist and author Bob Woodward, Trump understood and knew in advance that COVID19 was dangerous and contagious. The more doctors, researchers and citizens asked him to save lives by preparing to fight COVID-19, the more Trump decided he knew what was best for Americans and their health. He elevated himself to “Physician-in-Chief”, holding daily press conferences, recommending remedies that would lead to death and bodily harm rather than a cure.

On November 3, 2020, voters threw down their rods in voting booths, denying Republican Donald Trump another four years in the White House. Voters opened the door for a new president—Democrat Joe Biden-- to step in and attempt to deliver Americans from the life robbing virus.

Black health care compared to White healthcare

Throughout history Black folks have been denied adequate healthcare compared to White folks, As an African American woman, I have experienced medical discrimination more than one time. White doctors tended to spend more time with White patients, advising them about choices of treatments, offering a variety of medical opinions, and medications.

While sitting in a thin-walled waiting room, waiting for the doctor to come in, I overheard a conversation between him and a White patient. When the doctor talked with me, the time was quick, and lacked information regarding my condition. I was not told of choices, either in medications, second opinions or treatments. No follow-up date was scheduled.

Black folks have always had to make-do with inadequate medical care. In earlier years hospitals were segregated. White doctors refused treat Blacks in need of medical care, no matter their age or condition. There were no African American owned hospitals, or hospital sanctioned clinics they could go to. In the event of a catastrophic illness or outbreak of a disease in the community, they were treated by whomever knew the most about healing, relying on homemade remedies. It did not matter if that individual was a family member or neighbor.

During the onslaught of the polio epidemic, Black folks did not receive the same medical care as Whites. Because the face of polio was basically all White, it appeared that only Whites contracted the disease. There was a concept that “Negroes” were less susceptible to contracting polio. In photos and news reels shown on theater screens, you only saw Whites locked in the Iron Lung aka the Tank Ventilator aka the Drinker Tank. To keep the image pure and separate, the March of Dimes sponsored a polio unit at the Tuskegee Institute for the “colored race” in Alabama.

“The Tuskegee Institute opened a Polio Center in 1941. The center’s founding was the result of a new visibility of Black polio survivors, and the growing political embarrassment around the policy of the "Georgia Warm Springs Polio Rehabilitation Center", which Franklin Roosevelt founded in the 1920s, before he became president. It had a Whites only policy of admission.

“This policy, reflecting the ubiquitous norm of race-segregated health facilities of the era, was also sustained by a persuasive scientific argument about polio itself: that Blacks were not susceptible to the disease. And, therefore, research and treatment efforts that was focused on Black patients were neither medically necessary nor justified”.  

George Draper, an expert on polio, believed that eugenics played a key role in polio’s epidemiology. As proof of his theory, Draper postured that a child’s susceptibility to getting polio was due the “constitutional makeup” of Blacks and Whites. He argued that “well-grown, plump White, native-born children with widely spaced upper front teeth and ‘delicate’ teenagers who filled hospital beds and doctors’ offices during polio outbreak, was proof that Blacks were less susceptible to contracting the disease.

“White physicians studying Blacks--the syphilis-soaked race-- concluded that Blacks were more vulnerable to syphilis; less susceptible to contracting polio. Both theories were touted as evidence that they were “enlisted to establish the pathological and alien nature of the Black body”. Race and the Politics of Polio: Warm Springs, Tuskegee, and the March of Dimes, 2007.

In 2020 White physicians and medical staffs still look at African Americans as alien bodies, incapable of experiencing pain, explaining the location of their pain, or voicing what they suspect is causing the pain. Years ago, I had such an incident. I had eaten some bacon. Hours later I began to feel dizzy, my tongue felt as if it was getting thick. My speech was slurred. I was vomiting. I developed a slight fever. I had a headache and stomach pains. Afraid, not knowing what was happening to me, I went the emergency room. I was taken to a room, where I began vomiting again.

 I am not an actress, so I could not fake my symptoms. The nurse took my temperature. She asked what I had eaten. I told her a couple slices of bacon. I told it must have been spoiled when I purchased it. And then she asked a question that had nothing to do with my reason for being at the hospital. She wanted to know if I was married! I told her I was happily divorced.

The nurse and the doctor talked among themselves, and concluded that I was lonely, and seeking attention! They discarded the reason I came to the emergency room. They were stuck on me wanting attention. They asked if I was depressed. I told them no. I have friends and family. I was finally given a prescription and sent home. I had contracted a mild case of salmonella. Had it been more severe I might not be alive today.

Blatant disrespect; equal knowledge be damned

 Recently an African American woman, Susan Moore, a medical doctor from Indiana, fell prey to COVID-19. She was admitted to the Indiana University North Hospital. Dr. Moore said in a Facebook video that she was not getting adequate treatment. Her symptoms consisted of a “high respiratory rate, high heart rate, high fever and coughing up blood”. She said the doctor “downplayed her pain”.

Dr. Moore told the attending physician that she was in pain. She told him that she could not catch her breath. He did not believe her.  She said on the video, “I just put forth and maintained, if I was White I wouldn’t have to go through that. She said, “This how Black people get killed, when you send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves”.

Dr. Moore said initially the doctor refused to give her some pain medication. “All I know is I was in intense pain”, she said. She begged for the antiviral drug Remdesivir, which she did not receive. Dr. Moore said the doctor made her “feel like a drug addict, and he knew I was as physician”.  Nonetheless, she pleaded with the doctor, trying to convince him that she was having trouble breathing, and seriously ill. She was finally sent to the lab to get a CT scan. The scan proved her right.

She was discharged and sent home.  Dr. Moore was home less than 12 hours when her temperature spiked, her blood pressure dropped, her heartbeat slowed. She was rushed to a different hospital, where she received proper care. Unfortunately, the change of hospitals and medical care came too late. Dr. Moore’s condition worsened. She died three weeks after her coronavirus diagnosis, November 29, 2020.

Dr. Susan Moore said in the video the previous doctor never apologized to her.

Another similar incident occurred in 2016, in a West Chicago suburban hospital. The patient’s name was Ron Wyatt, 61, an African American. He entered the hospital with a 104 fever. His story was told by Michael O. Schroeder, staff reporter for US News. He wrote that Wyatt’s ordeal began with “a nurse telling his wife, who had power of attorney, that Wyatt would have to provide his own information, despite his wife’s request that she’s able to do so, because he wasn’t feeling well”.

The nurse said “No”, telling Wyatt “to sit right here” next to her. She took his temperature. Afterwards she said, “See! It’s only 99.6. OK? Wyatt had just taken a Tylenol to bring down his fever. At some point he began to have chills, his temperature rising above 100 degrees “before the visit ended”.

The nurse tagged his information, letting him know that the doctor was ready to see him. “She walked off, not with me, but in front of me—she never looked back”. Wyatt meets another nurse in the exam room. She treated him somewhat better than the first nurse. Another person comes into the room to get his insurance information. She pulled up the wrong name on her computer. Wyatt told her that was not his name. She insisted that the name was his. Wyatt laughs and says, “No, that’s not me”. She asks for his ID, which he showed her.

A doctor comes into the room. “After a less than thorough exam and never looking” at the patient’s face, he ordered IV fluids, telling Wyatt that his labs are” mostly normal”. He had to press the doctor for more information.

Wyatt said what “struck me most was he held one foot in, one foot out of the door”. By now his temperature was up again, above 100 degrees, “and the nurse made it clear to the doctor that more should be done.” Wyatt overheard the doctor say, “Tell him he can just take some Tylenol when he gets home”. The patient never saw the doctor again.

Dr. Ron Wyatt, the patient, was a Patient Safety Officer and medical director in the Division of Healthcare Improvement at the Joint Commission, an organization that accredits and certifies health care providers throughout the country. Yet, he was treated with disdain and total disrespect by staff at the hospital, where his skin color determined the kind of care he would receive, and how he would be treated.

Times change but taught attitudes remain the same

During the slave era in America, enslaved women were subjected to human experimentations conducted by Dr. J. Marion Sims, the so-called “father of gynecology. He performed his butchery on the enslaved women without anesthesia. They could not refuse his “treatments”, or any atrocity he wanted to perform on them. He assumed that Black women did not feel pain; therefore, no anesthesia was needed when operating on them.

Vanessa Northington Gamble, a professor at George Washington University said that between 1846 and 1849, Sims operated on at least 10 enslaved women without anesthesia. One woman, Anarcha, endured at least 30 painful surgeries. Gamble said after Sims practiced his methods on Black women, he moved to New York City to open a women’s hospital in the 1850s. He started treating White women, but with anesthesia. (USA Today, 2020).

There had been no changes in medical attitudes when the 1918 pandemic hit America. Black folks were denied adequate care. The usual enemies and reasons manifested themselves: poverty, segregation, racism, discrimination. Blacks that fell prey to diseases had to fend for themselves. If they received care in a segregated hospital, they were “hospitalized” in dark, damp basements.

Soraya Nadia McDonald, during an interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, talked about medical treatment for Blacks during 1918 flu pandemic in Chicago. “It should be understood overall that there wasn’t necessarily great medical care for the flu, period.  . . .the standard of treatment for the flu would be like lots of fluids and stay away from other people. But even within that framework, Black people, during the 1918 flu pandemic, are still at a disadvantage, and most of those reasons have to do with structural racism”.

In an article she wrote, titled “In 1918 to 2020, Race Colors America’s Response to Epidemics”, McDonald stated, “[E]ven in death, Black bodies were neglected by White public infrastructure. In Baltimore that year White sanitation department employees refused to dig graves for Black flu victims after the city’s only Black cemetery, Mount Auburn, could not accommodate any more graves.

“The War Department sent 324 Black soldiers  . . .  to do the task, which is very much in keeping with the way Black soldiers were treated by the Army in the war. In Chicago the 1918 flu was blamed on Black people by Dill Robertson, the city commissioner of public health”.

Mistrust of White doctors and vaccines still lingers among 

African Americans

Researchers and doctors experimenting on patients probably goes back centuries. History reveals that Blacks and Whites have been subjected to secret experiments conducted by researchers and doctors without their knowledge or consent. They were available, unpaid guinea pigs from mental institutions, poor and uneducated, prisoners, prostitutes. Even pregnant women and babies were snagged in the research traps.

The U.S. military conducted thousands upon thousands of experiments in and out of America on military personnel. Thousands upon thousands of them did not know they were human lab rats. Some the experiments were so horrific that you wonder how the researchers and doctors (and cooperating nurses) called themselves human.

When cases of racism, disease and health care are discussed among Black folks, the most mentioned incident is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, conducted between 1932 into 1972.  It was labeled: “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”. It took place in Tuskegee, Alabama; conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service. Eunice Rivers Laurie, an African American nurse, coordinated the experiment. She worked for the state of Alabama. None of the participants were informed about the reason for the study. When a penicillin was discovered and used as a cure in 1974, the infected men were not treated. Their suffering continued until their deaths.

Approximately 600 Black men, primarily sharecroppers, were recruited in Macon County, Alabama to participate. They were enticed with free meals, rides and promises of  free medical care. None of the men had ever been cared for or treated by an actual doctor. They were sorted into two groups: 399 had latent syphilis; 201 were free of syphilis. They were all treated for “bad blood” an old Southern term used to describe a number of illnesses. 

The Public Health Service (PHS) did not tell the men they had syphilis, leaving them untreated. Jumping ahead of the long study, some of the men, “by 1972, died of the disease; 100 died from complications relating the disease; 40 spouses were diagnosed with the disease, which was passed onto 19 children at birth”. (History Channel)

In 1973 Congress held a hearing on the Tuskegee experiment. A decision was made that the participants and the heirs should receive a $10 million out-of-court settlement. President Bill Clinton, in 1997, apologized for what happened to the Black men in the name of a deceptive medial study.

Another syphilis experiment took place in Guatemala in South America, from 1946 to 1949. The project was created to discover if penicillin could cure, treat, or prevent syphilis. U. S. government researchers infected 700 men, prostitutes, prisoners, soldiers and mental patients with syphilis and other diseases. None the victims were aware that they were being subjected to a deadly venereal disease.

In Africa, human experiments are constant and continuous. The country is poor and Black Africans do not have access to medications to eradicate diseases that have been wiped out in America. Because they are impoverished, Africans tend to fall prey to pharmaceuticals that regularly test experimental drugs on them. If the experimental drugs are used on White Africans, there is no data testifying to their participation.

Every disease under the sun finds its way to Africa. Even diseases that have been declared cured in Africa, seem to pop up time and time again, causing epidemics, serious health issues and death.

Listwand explains why pharmaceuticals do their dirty deeds in African countries. Companies rush to initiate clinical trials because Africans are a “fast growing, treatment naïve population; largely illiterate and uneducated public; large pools of diseases within populations; lower costs for conducting trials; no official national laws on clinical trials”.

Less than two percent of the drugs used in Africa are produced there. Pfizer’s experimental drug, Trovan, was used in a clinical trial in Kano, Nigeria, without consent from the government, or the parents, whose children were targeted. In 1996 there was an epidemic of meningitis in Africa. As a result of the experimental drug, 11 children died, five after taking Trovan, six after taking an older antibiotic used for comparisons in the clinical trial. Some of the children suffered blindness, deafness and brain damage. Except for the children and their family no one paid a price for destruction of human life.

Another syphilis experiment occurred in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. The syphilis experiment was backed and led by the United States. It was executed during Harry Truman’s presidency, with the cooperation of President Juan Jose Arevalo and the Guatemala health ministries. Like all “human experiments” the selected guinea pigs were plucked from prisons, mental institutions, poor communities, and soldiers. Prostitutes were used to infect men. The experiment’s purpose was to see if penicillin prevented contracting syphilis, or if cured it and other sexually transmitted diseases.

 As usual, none the victims knew that their lives and health was in danger. None of them consented to be guinea pigs.  Of the 1,500 victims, 83 died. The experiment was led by Charles Cutter, who later participated in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study in its later stage.

In 2010 President Barack Obama apologized to Jose Arevalo by telephone for the atrocity committed in the name of U. S. medical research.

America’s 1918 pandemic in 2021 America

In a book written by journalist Bob Woodward, then President Donald Trump revealed that he knew about the coronavirus, aka COVID-19, but did not want to tell Americans about it. He did not want to “create a panic”, so he chose to “play it down. I still like playing it down”, he revealed to Woodward. Trump said there were only five cases of the coronavirus in America in January 2019. He hoped that “everything’s going to be great”.  

Trump said at a January 30, press conference, “Hopefully, everything is going to be great”. Everything did not turn out great. Trump dropped all of his presidential responsibilities to concentrate “winning” an election that he had already lost to contender Joe Biden. He stopped pretending to care about COVID-19, and the mounting deaths. He did not acknowledge the dead. He never appeared on TV, sending condolences to the families and friends of the deceased. He has never voiced sorry for his inaction.

For reasons that have not been explained by physicians and medical researchers, the virus seems to be a bigger enemy in African American and Latino communities, compared to White communities, where it is assumed that all White folks are healthier in comparison. The media postured that African Americans have more “preexisting conditions” than Whites, making them more susceptible to contacting or dying from virus. They did mention that preexisting conditions were the result of inadequate healthcare.

Harriet Washington, medical scholar and editor, was interviewed in 2007 in by Democracy Now reporter Amy Goodman about her book “Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medial Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present”. Washington talked about disparity in medical treatment of Black folks. She touched on the differences between two folders that she discovered, one for a Black patient and one for a White patient. At the time she was a medical undergraduate at the University of Rochester.

“The White gentleman’s file was thick and full of testament of his loving family, his insurance support, his determination to live, and detailed a really Herculean attempt on the of the medical personnel to procure a kidney for him.

“The file of the Black gentleman was very thin. The word ‘Negro’ appeared on every page of it, and somebody had underlined it on a social profile right above the single line that indicated  the medical staff’s plans to help him prepare for his imminent demise.

“The White gentleman and the Black gentleman were very similar in their profiles, but they were treated differently, and I wanted to know whether this was a consistent feature of medical care or just an anomaly”.

COVID-19 vaccines: who is getting shots, who is not

If you have money or access to people with connections and influence, then you are guaranteed a fat chance of getting two COVID-19 vaccine shots immediately. An ABC News headline told the story of who was pushed to the head of the line. “Wealthy residents got a disproportionate share of vaccines in Texas county”. The county was in Dallas, Texas.

“Of the 3,071 doses given out at the Fair Park vaccination site, 461 doses went to people in three high-end income zip codes. People from zip codes with the highest number of COVID-19 infections received a total of 59 doses”.

In Miami wealthy residents were put at head of the line. Neighborhoods that cater to minorities are being flooded by vaccine hunting Whites. Using their computers and cell phones, they track areas where vaccines are being administered, the dates and times. Usually, these same Whites say there are afraid to venture into those “violent” communities by accident, let alone on purpose.

The Seattle Times reported that “three medical systems in the region gave special vaccine access to big donors or foundation members. Two of the hospital organizations acknowledged they made a mistake in prioritizing influential people”.

Philadelphia is 44 percent Black, but only 12 percent of Blacks have been vaccinated; in Miami-Dade county only seven percent of the 17 percent Black population have been vaccinated; Whites in New York received nearly half of the vaccine doses. Black and Latinos were “starkly underrepresented based on their share of the population”.

There is no reliable data stating why minorities are getting less of the vaccines, except what the media reports. Nonetheless, the media are broadcasting daily, hour after hour, that African Americans and Latinos are skeptical about getting vaccinated due to past experiments, in which Blacks and Latinos were used as guinea pigs.

President Joe Biden has vowed to equalize distributions of the vaccines, making sure the vaccines are getting to the communities hit the hardest by COVID-19. In a year’s time, well over a half million Americans have died from the virus. Thousands who survived the virus are experiencing physical and mental issues of all kinds. The vaccine works differently for some people. Black and Whites and other folks have reported similar symptoms.

It’s true that African Americans are reluctant to get vaccine shots. However, Blacks are still willing to get the shots to thwart the coronavirus, that has branched off into four other viruses. Accessibility to the vaccine is not as convenient in Black neighborhoods as in White neighborhoods. Even with the convenience, Whites are also leery about the vaccine. They do not trust the government, or the efficacy of the vaccines. Whites, more than minorities, believe that COVID-19 is a hoax, or just a case of the flu, as Donald Trump told them.

In none of the thousands, perhaps millions of medical experiments conducted in America, poor, and third world countries, United States researchers and doctors did not offer available medications to cure the men, women and children they infected with diseases and infections. They allowed victims to die in pain and agony, humiliating their humanity.